The choices for books by and about rock stars are almost endless this season. Here are a few.

How Music Works :: By David Byrne :: McSweeney's :: 352 pages :: $32 :: Less a tell-all autobio than a textbook, this is Talking Head Byrne's treatise on what he has gleaned from four decades in the music business. It's divided into four sections that journey from the existential questions at the center of music to the heart of darkness that is the business, with a few autobiographical passages amid the much lengthier ruminations on the nature of sound and the culture of performance.

Michael Jackson and his fears At the dead end of a decade when everyone was too discouraged to wonder if pop had a center, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall (1979) gathered up disillusioned factions of fans as confidently as it punted four singles into the Top 10.

The Thriller is gone With the release of Bad (Epic), Michael Jackson ends a recording hiatus of nearly five years. He could have stayed away for 10 years and still not have escaped the shadow of Thriller , the biggest-selling album of all time.

Abnormal encounter of the suds kind What better place to show off your new brand of beer, Three Stooges, than at the annual Stooges convention in California? That's exactly what Dewey Parsons was doing recently when word came that the convention had to close early to allow a certain VIP to wander through.

Mommy, what's with Michael? " After I got HIStory , I played it incessantly. It was the greatest, strangest, angriest, most bizarre thing I ever heard. Michael Jackson is this iconic persona..."

Britney Spears and Michael Jackson fight it out Cue up track six on the new Britney (Jive) and prepare yourself for the Technicolor disco flash-back of the year, swooning string section, chunky Nile Rodgers guitar riff, and all. The song's called "Anticipating," and it captures the most famous 19-year-old girl in the world at her guileless, sentimental best.

The Wiz is alive in Boston For many years, people have been asking me, 'Quincy, what was your very first big assignment?' My answer now is, "THE WIZ." – Anytime you have 9 singing principals, 120 dancers, 6 sound technicians, 3 conductors, 4 contractors, 300 musicians, 105 singers, 9 orchestrators, 6 copyists, 5 music editors; you are talkin' big numbers.

The Wiz arrives in Boston "If you believe in yourself, you will have brains, heart and courage to last your whole life through. . ."

Reaction Jackson There was Michael the living, breathing, singing performer and Jackson the commercial spectacle. We surrendered to the former, he to the latter.

THE STROKES | COMEDOWN MACHINE | March 18, 2013 The Strokes burst out in a post-9/11 musical world with a sound that was compact and airtight, melodies coiled frictionlessly in beats and fuzzed vocals.

GLISS | LANGSOM DANS | February 01, 2013 If rock and roll is three chords and the truth, then the mutant genre offspring shoegaze can be summed up as one chord, three fuzzboxes, and a sullen, muttered bleat.